SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY &

I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE

August 10 - 16

These films were two of the seven films commissioned for the Weiner Mozart New Crowned Hope Festival, Vienna 2006.

To mark Mozart's 250th birth anniversary, the city of Vienna invited stage and festival director Peter Sellars to curate and create a unique artistic initiative. Sellars responded with New Crowned Hope, a festival of newly commissioned works from a wide range of international artists inspired by Mozart's music.

Sellars commissioned seven filmmakers from around the world. The only brief was that the films respond to the masterworks created during the last year of Mozart's life: The Magic Flute, La clemenza di Tito and Requiem. They were not restricted to Mozart's themes, rather it is Mozart's inspiration that is felt throughout. Mozart lived at a pivotal period in European history, as the ideas of the Enlightenment helped to crumble long-held belief systems. It is Sellar's intuition that we live in similar times. The filmmakers he has commissioned share that intuition. As did Mozart in music, these film-makers are seeking new ways in which to describe the world, ways that explore new possibilities for cinema and for life.

"The most adventurous filmmaking all seemed to come out of Asia, most notably Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and A Century and Tsai Ming-Liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone-Time Out ,London'

August 10-16
Fri 7:30, Sat 9:30, Sun 7:30, Mon 9:30, Tues 7:30, Wed 9:30, Thurs 7:30

THAILAND/FRANCE/AUSTRIA 2006Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul // 105 min // 35mm

Recently banned in its native Thailand, Apichatpong's latest masterpiece proves he's at the forefront of a new kind of international arthouse cinema.

Again structured in two halves with teasing correspondences, Apichatpong's follow-up to Tropical Malady sketches moments in the lives of two hospital doctors. ...Apichatpong tells us that the two central characters are based on his own mother and father at the time they first met, before they fell in love and married, but this is nothing like a piece of imagined family history. Rather, this Buddhist-minded film invites us to reflect on time, memory, place and the attraction of opposites. It's sometimes very funny, and always deeply, seductively mysterious: a dreamy, romantic movie about life's limitations and possibilities.-Tony Rayns, VIFF

Since Weerasethakul began making films and videos in the early 90s, he has become one of the few film-makers in Thailand who have worked outside the strict Thai studio system. He is also active in promoting experimental and independent films and is currently acting as producer on an experimental feature. Weerasethakul has earned growing international recognition through both his film-making and art projects. He has exhibited his art projects widely internationally, has made a large number of short films and three feature films. With these three films of very original vision, Weerasethakul has become one of the major international young film-makers to watch and a key figure in the emerging Thai cinema. Tropical Malady, his last feature, won the special jury prize in Cannes in 2004

"A playful, funny and touching study in time and transformation" - LA WEEKLY

"A quiet masterpiece, delicate and full of wonder" - Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

Screeners available

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August 10-16
Fri 9;30, Sat 7:15, Sun 9:30, Mon 7:15, Tues 9:30, Wed 7:15, Thurs 9:30

MALAYSIA/CHINA/TAIWAN/FRANCE/AUSTRIA 2006Director: Tsai Ming-liang // 115 min // 35mm

Shooting in Malaysia for the first time, Tsai Ming-Liang strikes his usual balance between humour and horror but adds a surprising romantic warmth.

Tsai Ming-Liang's fetish actor Lee Kang-Sheng plays two roles, one of whom (a man on life-support) may well be dreaming the other. Homeless on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, Hsiao Kang is robbed, beaten and left for dead; he is found and nursed by Rawang, an immigrant worker, who lives in the shell of a modernist building abandoned during construction. Rawang's feelings for his patient may or may not be sexual, but there's definitely something like lust in the eyes of Chyi, a waitress...when they light upon the recovering Hsiao Kang. And so a triangle forms as a blanket of polluted air settles on the city and everyone has trouble breathing... Sometimes erotic, often funny, the film underpins Tsai's familiar deadpan allegory with what look suspiciously like hints of social realism.-Tony Rayns, VIFF

Tsai Ming-Liang was born and raised in Kuching, Malaysia where he was introduced by his grand-parents to the popular cinema of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Asian countries. In 1977 he moved to Taiwan and went to study film and drama at the Chinese Culture University, during which time he became acquainted with the European New Wave cinema. After graduation he wrote and staged plays, often beginning to explore the themes of contemporary life, loneliness and alienation which became regular themes of his films. For nearly ten years, he worked in TV and developed scenarios and then in 1989 and 1990 directed a series of telefilms, including The Boys, which marked his move towards cinema and during which he discovered his favourite actor Lee Kang-Sheng. Lee was to take the central role in all his films from REBELS OF THE NEON GOD onwards. With this film and with VIVE L'AMOUR, which won the Golden Lion Award at the 1994 Venice Film Festival, Tsai began to be acclaimed as a major new voice in the Asian cinema. Over the series of films that followed he came to be recognised as a new modern master of cinema to stand alongside his fellow Taiwanese Hou Hsiao Hsien and Edward Yang. He has received numerous awards, most recently for the Berlin Silver Bear for The Wayward Cloud.

"...this urban nocturne is one of Tsai's most beautiful and naturalistic films" - J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

"The geographical shift from Tsai's familiar Taipei to his homeland of Malaysia results in both a revitalization of those elements and a new level of visual beauty. The stunning final shot makes it a masterpiece." - Jason Anderson, EYE WEEKLY

Screeners available

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Username: Media Password: Download

More photos available at: http://www.strandreleasing.com/pressroom/pressroom.asp